The prospect that a vital element of Microsoft’s .NET will debut in a Java IDE has come a step closer. A plug-in that connects Microsoft’s Corp’s C Sharp programming language with the Eclipse Framework has been built by Puteaux, France-based Improve SA. Eclipse is built in Java’s Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT). Read the report at TheRegister.
.NET Cloud on the Eclipse Horizon
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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An open source C# and VB.Net editor:
http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/default.asp
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The “Standard Widget Toolset” (or SWT) is not so standard, nor is it from Sun. IBM created SWT as a ground up widget set that bypasses AWT/Swing (the actual standard toolsets for Java) and has some pros and cons…
Pros-
It’s supposedly faster. The SWT widgets rely on a library that drills all the way down to the native windowing system of the OS, so in essence you are drawing native widgets in Java. No need for a Look’n’Feel for your platform.
It looks pretty nice, too.
Cons-
It’s by NO means “standard”… From what I’ve read (I had to evaluate SWT for a project that I am working on) SWT does not play well with AWT or Swing, so once you pick SWT, there is no elegant way to include Swing widgets in your application.
Any application based on SWT will not run on your system if SWT has not also been ported to your system (for example, MacOSX has been waiting for Eclipse for a while – a port is close, but not finished)
This list is by no means inclusive- this post is merely a possible misconseption about the “standardness” of SWT.
I’ve tested the C# plugin for Eclipse. It’s pretty cool but #develop is way better.
I’ve played around with this plugin for a little bit using eclipse on Redhat 7.2 and Mono. The syntax highlighting is OK, but there were a few little bugs.
Also, the mono compiler (mcs) now supports the same command line parameters as csc, so the Improve plugin *can* compile and run a C# program from within Eclipse.
JP